The present invention relates to the processing of telephone calls in a telecommunications system.
Among the various forward-looking concepts being implemented or planned for the balance of the decade, and beyond, is the notion of sequence calling. Once this feature is deployed, a telephone service subscriber will be enabled to specify to the telecommunications infrastructure a sequence of telephone numbers to which a call to the subscriber can be routed until the subscriber is "found". For example, a subscriber to a "700" telephone number, such as a so-called personal EasyReach.TM. 700 number obtained from AT&T, will be able to specify that a call made to that number should be routed, for example, first to the subscriber's office telephone number and then, if no answer there, to the cellular telephone number associated with the subscriber's car telephone and, if no answer there, to the subscriber's home telephone number. The prior art in this regard is typified by the technology described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,125 issued to C. W. Creswell et al on Jun. 22, 1993.